


Oppvåkning

by Ibenholt



Category: Cyborg 009
Genre: Blood and Gore, Human Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibenholt/pseuds/Ibenholt
Summary: There is a first time for everything, superpowers included.





	1. “Let us take a little re-tread, shall we?”

*MAMA!* 

It all flooded into Ivan’s mind like a burst dam. Gamo had connected the right nerves and the overwhelming realization of what had happened to him in his short life led to a burst of energy as he sent images and words into his father’s mind. 

*YOU KILLED MAMA!* 

Gamo fell to his knees, clutching his head. 

“IVAN, STOP! PLEASE!!” 

*MURDERER*

He remembered everything. All impressions and sights were given context and understanding. He had reached out and connected to both mama and papa earlier on while papa was still picking his brain bloody. 

He remembered mama’s face that was looking down at him like she couldn’t believe he was real. She had been so warm when she had held him, and she had sung to him. 

He saw himself through her eyes, felt how her heart swelled at the sight of him. How she teared up when he held her finger. How she was overcome with grief when they learned of his sickness.

And then he saw her as papa came over her like a great shadow and hit her and hit her and hit her until she stopped moving. He could feel the pain she had been in, and that her last word on her lips had been his name. 

He would never be able to let his mother know how much he loved her. And now papa had done all of this to him. 

With a burst of energy, he screamed as loudly as he could, knocking out Gamo, and short-circuiting everything in the room. 

For a moment, power emitted from every cell of his being. 

When it ended, he barely had enough energy to lower himself safely back into his crib.


	2. “You have been selected for the Cyborg project.”

Wasn’t it every kid’s dream to fly?

Just soar through the air like goddamn Superman. That’s what they sugared the bitter pill with after he had woken up and been told he wasn’t leaving. They blamed the cops at first, so he cooperated. After breaking a few jaws and taking out an eye or two. It wasn’t like he was getting soft or nothing.

Wish he had been told that his legs would have to go first, though. The bloody stumps he woke up to were almost as bad as the pain that spread through him, leaving him losing about everything he had eaten in the last month, then hitting him with a bad fever and some infection the scientists almost gave up on fighting. 

But he got better. He always got better. Good thing, because when he healed, he stood up on the shaky new legs, activated the rockets, and must have hit every single fucking wall before waking up with about every bone in his body broken. Not that there were too many left. 

He learned how to walk again. Learned how to avoid the acceleration device in his mouth when he ate. Learned how to not pick at the ports they operated into his body. Eventually, he even learned to respect them enough not to talk back or hurt them. Electroshock was a hell of a motivator.

They’d patch him up so many times he was starting to wonder when they were gonna give up on him. Then again, they wanted to see how much mechanics they could operate into him before he fell apart from exhaustion or just plain blew up like the last folks he had barely had the time to see, much less be introduced to before they were carted away in buckets.

He wasn’t about to join them, he had decided. He wasn’t gonna be expendable. So the next time, he was careful with the thrusters, and he got to soar into the open air. With them at  
the controls, able to let him plummet to the ground.

To be honest, he didn’t really feel like Superman at all.


	3. “Forget who you were and what you were doing before you came here.”

She was convinced she was mad when she woke up. 

Fran retreated to a corner, clenched her eyes shut and shoved her fingers into her ears. Her own pulse was a thunder and her breathing was roaring ocean. But they were nothing compared to all the instruments. The people. Everything was being crammed into her head at once. Information, and the endless, endless beeping!! 

She started shrieking. Or did she whimper? Either way, it closed out the other things for a moment.  
But then someone approached, and she turned to look at them. It was too much! Everything, his face, his body and clothes appeared full of details. His footsteps were like crashing cymbals next to her ears. A sickly green covered her vision as she somehow took in everything around her, including him.  
She could see the damage the sun had done to his skin. His wrinkles, every little spot and imperfection, but also the fine hairs and the kind eyes. It was as if someone had scraped away layers of dust and grime and filth in a window, and now, the sun’s sharpest, brightest rays were coming through. The sight didn’t bother her. It overwhelmed her.  
She reveled in the details of his face. But the noises made her want to die. He didn’t speak, but gave her an assuring smile. She would remember that later, however. The moment he did it, it wouldn’t have mattered. He took her hand and gently pressed the area between her thumb and index finger. 

And she could have kissed him.

It hushed. It didn’t entirely go away, but it faded to a small hum. He offered her his other hand, and she rose. 

“There we are, my dear.” 

“Please… please, I need to find my brother. What is this place? Why am I dressed like this? What’s wrong with me??” 

“Gilmore!!”

A voice crackled, making her cover her ears again. The man lifted his hand, and shortly after, a small group of men in white coats stepped into the room as well. 

“She’s ready for testing, gentlemen.” 

He said and smiled up at Fran, 

“You have nothing to worry about. You’ll see.” 

She heard mechanisms open underneath her, but didn’t have the strength to move before the floor swallowed her up.


	4. “You belong to Black Ghost now.”

He woke up with Hilda’s name on his lips. 

There had been distant pain and lights and coldness for so long. But now that he was fully awake, he clenched his eyes shut until they would adjust, and felt as if his body was asleep.

This wasn’t heaven, then.

There were men standing over him, writing things on clipboards and speaking to one another in a language that only got more and more coherent the longer they spoke. Doctors? 

“Where’s my wife?”

He mumbled. He started when a dark green chart appeared in front of him. Statistics. Words and numbers that he for some reason could make sense of. As he turned to each doctor, new information flooded his vision and his head. 

He gasped when they made him stand. He couldn’t feel his legs, and he fell, bending his knees. 

They opened. 

But nothing came out. No blood. No bones. When he reached out to touch them, he realized that his right hand was grey. 

“About 80% of his body was badly burnt, broken or simply beyond saving.”

He started when he felt a cold something poking the base of his neck, 

“The collar bones and head have been reinforced, but left with an organic look as you can see. We have done marvelous things with the new synth-skin. But…” 

Something hit him. 

Maybe. He wasn’t sure. He had felt an impact, but no pain. Turning around, he could see that what had been poking him was a walking stick. It was broken. 

“The back, the chest and the hips have been armored. And the legs, well… they’re a treat. Dr. Gaia?”

“Both his knees fire rockets. For the time being, we’ve left them empty. Otherwise, we have done what we can to insure he will be allowed natural movement.”

He felt his own chest. He thought he did, anyway. But his hands didn’t allow it. It was as if they were asleep, too. Heavy and uncoordinated. They were there, he knew and he saw.  
But what in God’s name was wrong with his right hand? 

He heard metal against metal and looked down. Tapping the grey fingers against his chest, he heard a hollow noise. What had they done? Was he empty? He looked up, meeting only admiring looks and screens that showed pictures of him full of tubes and without legs. He looked down again and tried to focus.

All his senses told him that his left hand was on his leg. But he couldn’t feel the leg itself, either. Reaching up the skin on his face was getting cold from it. Both hands went through his hair, which was still there, and down to his cheeks again. 

“His hand produces energy bolts, or bullets, if you will. We were unsuccessful with the skin blend, and so we left it as is. His left hand produces a blade he himself will decide the shape and length of.”

As if instructed, a blade emerged, and he started, pulling it away from his face. Once it retracted, and he looked to his other hand. He straightened it out, and it got stuck. He slammed it against his thigh, and it relaxed, but he still couldn’t feel anything. 

“To anyone else, he will look perfectly ordinary, but we will know that he is a walking, talking artillery.” 

Artillery? For whom? 

“We had plans to do the same to the woman he was with. Unfortunately, she was beyond saving. A shame. They could have been a fine double threat.”

Hilda. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. The God of Death.” 

There was applause that started dying down when he clawed at his knees, and started screaming.


	5. “Do as we say, and we will insure you are fed, safe and well-cared for.”

Geronimo had expected their offer would be shady, so he hadn’t taken the drink they had offered him. He hadn’t expected the needle in his side, though, and he broke out of the car.

They had chased him down through the woods. He thought he had lost them, but just as his knees failed him and the world got hazy, he heard them come up behind him. 

When he woke up, his wrists and ankles were restrained by something that seemed to be the consistency of crackers, and he got lose in time for a door to open and a group of men in lab coats to enter. The one in front smile amiably at him,

“So you’ve awakened! Hello, 005.”

“005?” 

“Your new designation!” 

He said, only to have a curly-haired man elbow him,

“Cut the chit-chat, Gilmore. I wanna see if it worked!” 

He whistled loudly, and five armed guards appeared. 

“What…”

Was all Geronimo managed before two of them lunged at him with knives. He grabbed the arm of the first guy, only to drop him when he screamed. He fell, clutching his bicep. His forearm looked crushed. 

He was so horrified that he didn’t even notice the other man until he started grunting. Looking down, he saw him shoving the blade against his stomach over and over, receiving no other result than bending it. 

“Huh. Fair enough. You can stop now! And get that idiot to sick-bay!”

The curly-haired man said. The men were led out, and the three other guards pointed guns at Geronimo, their faces drained of any emotion. The scientists were grinning, however. 

“What’s going on here?”

“FIRE, YOU MORONS!” 

Knowing it wouldn’t help, he lifted his arms and tried to shield his head and chest.

It was like being hit by hail. Not comfortable, but it didn’t exactly hurt. One bullet made it past his arm and grazed his cheek. The guns stopped, and he touched his face. No blood, not even a cut. 

“Astonishing! Truly astonishing work, Gilmore!”

The first scientist nodded in gratitude and turned his attention back to Geronimo, 

“Don’t worry, young man, I don’t think you have to worry about any kind of injury in the future.”

They turned around, taking the guards with them,

“Next test.”

“No, wait!” 

He ran towards them, but the door shut in his face. He lifted his arm and put his fist through it. 

A violent shock had him crying out and stumbling backwards. 

“Oh dear. I didn’t think you’d attempt it so soon. Please don’t do that, 005. We’ve installed a microchip in you that will go off if you attempt such a feat again.” 

The first scientist’s voice came. Geronimo backed away from the door, looking around the room. Was there any other way out? Where was this microchip? Somewhere in his spine? 

“Why are you doing this? I never signed up for this!” 

“Prepare for the next test, 005!”

The ceiling started creaking and was coming down over him. Looking around, he found that there was nothing to hide under.

The ceiling creaked again, and dropped.

Uncertain, he made a fist and punched. It stopped completely before splitting and raining over him. It was as if he was shrugging off foam blocks. But the sound and look and feel of them was clearly cement. 

He looked up, seeing that the ‘ceiling’ had just been a platform stuck to a huge chain with a hook at the end. It quickly retracted, and he watched it vanish in a hole that sealed up. 

He considered seeing if he could jump, but he already felt dizzy after the previous shock. 

He stared at his hand again. The skin on his knuckles hadn’t even broken. 

What the hell was this?

He didn’t have much more time to think as guns came out of the actual ceiling and filled him with another round of bullets that only left his skin smoking. 

“That will do just fine!” a voice cried from above, “Operation Iron Man complete! Get him dressed and send him out into the field!”


	6. "We are free to mold you as we wish."

Chang wasn’t quite certain what he had expected from the afterlife, but it couldn’t be worse than this. 

He had been strapped to a table for what felt like days while they had forced his mouth open and filled him with tubes and electroshocks. They had carved in him and all but hollowed him out. Perhaps it was karmic punishment, but at least he had had the decency to kill his pigs before he did that to them. 

He sometimes woke up to hear babble in a language he couldn’t comprehend, or faces covered by masks, before he slipped back into nothing. 

This time, he woke up in a dark metal cell, placed on something meant to be a bed with utter silence ringing in his ears. As he sat up and looked around, everything turned bright green, and he could see the panels in the walls, and that aside from the bed, there was nothing else. 

He looked down at himself, and found that he was wearing a tunic with huge buttons on the chest, as well as boots and a scarf. Fitting, as his throat felt as if he was going to work up a severe cold throughout the day. 

But then the feeling or whatever it was welled up in his throat and he hunched over as a mix of blood, gunk and something unbearably hot fell out. How odd. He didn’t feel sick at all. 

He almost screamed when he opened his eyes. 

Embers. 

In the disgusting little heap were embers. He pulled his legs up on the bed, watching how it melted through the floor. 

He breathed hard, and a pure orange flame emerged from his mouth, which he slapped hands over.

What in the world… 

Smoke was emerging from his nostrils. Was he turning into a dragon? He felt his moustache which hadn’t even been singed. There was a slight taste of smoke in his mouth, but  
after so many years of using a pipe, it hardly bothered him.

He exhaled. No fire, but he could feel something in the back of his throat building up, ready to go off at the right signal. 

He leaned his head back and breathed hard again. A large burst of flames came out this time. There were windows at the top of the room, and behind them were shadows that were staring down at him. Panicking, he looked to the floor again and breathed as hard as he could. The metal parted as easy as nothing, and the green light vanished as it was  
replaced with natural sunlight.

“Subject 006 is awake and ready for testing.” 

A voice called out. The floor opened underneath him, revealing a forest. He wasn’t sure the flames would soften his fall.


	7. “We have no qualms about hurting you.”

“Are you deaf?” 

GB braced himself for another shock, but still screamed when it came.

He had thought it was a joke at first.

Pranks were normal in the theatre. He was certain there was still footage somewhere of him jumping into the air at the sight of props that would suddenly come to life.  
He had started suspecting that something wasn’t right when that guard had knocked him in the face with his gun. And he was quite convinced when that same guard let go of his weapon and really started going in. 

When a steel tipped boot went into his stomach, the past few years came back to him. He didn’t have any friends who would want to joke with him, or any enemies who would want to hurt him this badly. He was nobody. He owed the local pub some money, true, but not an amount that warranted this kind of treatment. 

Now, with all the booze he had washed down out of his system, he was lying strapped to a table, staring up into a ceiling while a voice was demanding he ‘change’. 

“Look, we had the guards stop beating you. Now you change for us.” 

The voice said, trying to sound at least a little bit kind. He swallowed,

“I don’t understand…”

“Think about someone. Someone you’re close to.” 

Sophie. The curve of her neck and the delicate hands. What he wouldn’t give to see that kind face looking down at him now. 

He suddenly felt himself shifting. All over. He shrank somewhat, and something sprouted from his head. 

Something was terribly wrong, but not in a painful way. Hair brushed his shoulder and he panicked, pulling his hands to him and found that he could, only scraping himself on the metal restraints. 

But they were hers. He had Sophie’s beautiful hands, down to the slightly chipped nail polish. 

“WAIT!”

The voice didn’t matter anymore. He felt himself from head to stomach. Sophie. It was all her. The scar she had gotten from falling from a tree one summer, the little mole… 

“No… what…?”

As he held the hands in front of himself, panic set in, and the hands started trembling terribly before fading away in his blurry vision. 

“Stop that!!” 

Blinking the tears away, he looked at stumps of what looked like candle wax.

He was melting. 

Oh god, he was melting! His body was breaking down and he could feel himself pouring down the metal slab, trying to scream with a mouth that was far away. He could feel his insides joining in, becoming soup. 

A shock brought him back, frying him until the body stopped right before growing skin over his mouth and eyes. It had snapped back like a rubber band. It was him, he just knew it. 

“A button, perhaps…”

The voice muttered before it got a face, that of an old bearded man who straps his hands back and refused to answer his pleas to be told what they had done to him. 

“A button might be the solution.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sophie in question is his former girlfriend from the 2001-series


	8. “Any questions, weapon?”

For as long as Pyunma could remember, he had been plagued with nightmares of being pulled apart. But now they included the feeling of his skin being peeled back and sharp, ice cold metal digging in. 

When he woke up, he’d call out for Masmado and Kabore for as long as he could, only to drift back into slumber out of sheer exhaustion. 

When he finally woke up and stayed awake, he was in a glass cube in a bright room. 

As he got to his feet, a valve opened, and water started pouring out. More and more opened. The walls were to slippery to climb, and he desperately clawed at the floor, looking for loose panels. Nothing. 

If the ceiling offered any kind of solution, his chance was coming soon enough. He was already waist-deep in the water. Soon enough he was floating. 

He pushed everything he could find, but nothing gave. He took a last few breaths with tears in his eyes, briefly wondering if he could knock himself out. Drowning took so long…

The water came up, and he shut his eyes and prepared. 

He could breathe. 

He couldn’t believe it. His eyes flew open and vision was completely clear. He could see particles floating around him

And he could see the men in lab coats who suddenly came in to look at him. They checked the monitors and talked amongst themselves.  
Bastards! 

Swimming suddenly felt completely natural as he swam down to look at one of them who was tapping the glass. He was quick and in-control, and that gave him an idea. 

He torpedoed toward each end of the tank over and over. It seemed some of them started to catch on just before the glass shattered. 

It hadn’t even hurt. The water washed over all of them, smashing him into a wall. It barely hurt. 

“SECURITY!!” 

He knocked out the men in lab coats and ran all he could to the exit. 

As the opened the door, he was met by 6 guns pointed right at his head, and a short man with a long, black beard who was grinning, 

“Subject 008 appears to be ready for testing.”


End file.
